Rob Goodspeed's blog

Censorship in Iraq“Iraq’s lethal peace could yet change American minds” editorializes London’s left-leaning Guardian, pointing out that: “Almost unnoticed outside Iraq, the senior US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has issued a proclamation outlawing any “gatherings, pronouncements or publications” that call for the return of the Ba’ath party – or for opposition to the US occupation.”> A quick Google news search shows they are indeed correct – it seems mostly foreign news sources are running information about the speech ban that was announced June 12.

Also, This Guardian columnn seems to summarize the current situation in Iraq particuparly well:… The anti-democratic and flagrantly colonial nature of the new power in Iraq is undisguised. While Iraqi political parties are pressing for a broadly-based conference to elect a transitional government, the new US proconsul, Paul Bremer, is only prepared to tolerate a hand-picked Iraqi advisory council, while his occupation authority ploughs ahead with shaping the free market, pro-western order the US plans to impose on the ruins of an independent Iraq.

this Australian newspaper doesn’t pull any punches: “US forces lost an attack helicopter to enemy fire as they mounted a massive military campaign in central Iraq against what some officials are calling an organized resistance against the American occupation.”

Meanwhile, the official count of U.S. casualties is up to 229. (During Gulf War I, the ‘official’ count was hundreds off the true number of dead.)